Main Finn/John Boyega Episode IX Thread

The problem is, right before this scene, we see Rey and Kylo get a "Hulk smash" overwhelming "Rambo" type win over the Praetorian guards.

Making Finn-Phasma fight insufficient and unsatisfying relatively.

Even Boyega has said that his preacher father is waiting for Boyega to finally play a "Rambo John McClaine" type character.

Who can blame him. Because Finn ain't it.

 

Just so we're clear the discussion is not about his willingness to fight but his ability to fight.

No the books don't say he's Captain America because CA has actual superpowers. But BTA does suggest he should be as close to him in skill level as a Star Wars character without powers should be. It explicitly states that he consistently scored within the top 1 percent of all stormtrooper cadets in any training he received. Also that he was well on his way to being among the greatest of stormtroopers as the First order had ever seen and that he was so good that he was basically the standard set for all the rest of them that were brought up with him and would come after him.

 

True. I think all of Boyega's fans are waiting for something like that, so he's in good company.

 

"Look, good during training is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else"

Finn had never seen combat until the Jakku Village. He made a choice. He was smart enough to find Poe, steal a Tie Fighter, shoot blasters he's never used on a ship he'd never been in, survive the crash, get to Jakku, find a town, etc. He got bested in melee combat which is to be expected when it's been clear he's a blaster guy. I might add he was successful in infiltrating Star Killer base, capturing Phasma (his idea), disabling the shields, helping Han, Chewy and Rey, and had the balls to fight Kylo Ren one on one. Han went up against Vader once. It didn't end well for him either.

Now move along to TLJ. He manages to infiltrate Snokes command ship and almost disable the tracker. He failed (it's the second act, they always fail) and yet he still got the jump on Phasma and took her out. Once again, melee combat which isn't his strength.

There's nothing wrong with his ability to fight. Again, 2 or 3 days after being a Stormtrooper the guy did all the stuff I listed above. He's no average trooper or fighter.

 

Not one time is it even mentioned or even implied in any movie that Finn is any more exceptional with a blaster than any other character or that he lost because he's not a melee guy. As a matter of fact BTA made it clear that he's as at least more proficient at melee than TR-8R as he kicked his butt numerous times at it. Yet he's looking scared of him and losing to him in the movie. We can talk about his supposed 100% accuracy with a blaster in TFA all we want but there is no attention at all called to this so it's not a thing as far as the movies are concerned. All it is at the end of the day is fans making stuff up to make Finn appear exceptional at something because the people making the movies refuse to do so. So much so that even if he was supposed to be exceptional with blasters, they sure wasted an entire movie with him not shooting one a single time in TLJ.

Also, to your point of excusing his ineptitude as being due to him never having been in a battle, BTA also says that the stormtroopers are trained in very realistic battle simulators that prepare them for literally any situation they can encounter. So it's not an excuse it's simply bad and inconsistent characterization. Know what's also inconsistent? The fact that I'm supposed to believe that after "training since birth" he wouldn't be prepared for battle out on the field but after a five second tutorial from Poe is able to pick up how to use, in his words "complicated" Tie Fighter cannons and the Falcons guns having never sat behind any of those controls before and use them pretty proficiently. Make that make sense.

 

1. Stop with the books. We know JJ doesn’t write his films around what book authors come up with. They just write what they want and as long as they don’t blatantly contradict the films, they can write anything.
2. I never said he was enept in battle. I said he made a choice - not to slaughter innocents. Quite the contrary, he’s just not a master with a melee weapon.
3. It kills me that people don’t like his character. So he’s not John Wick. Those characters are boring and one dimensional.
4. I love how you ignore everything he’s done, when even Rose and the Resistance view him as a hero. Yet Star Wars fans on message boards view him as a failure. Pretty sad.

 

We are assuming hes not a melee guy but every movie he is in a significant melee confrontation and is given minimal use with a blaster. I watched TLJ last week and I'm pretty sure he never held or fired a blaster. One could draw the conclusion they're trying to make Finn look less formidable than his counterparts (Rey, Poe, hell BB-8).

 

It might indeed be a broad department. I only raised the point to say that argument is out there (i.e. that Finn breaking his conditioning did not make him special because there was a reconditioning unit). It's speculation either way, but the argument exists.

I'l agree that "special" is a point of view, and that Finn has moments of heroism. I don't think that makes him special among Resistance members since they are all heroic, fight for others, and often face a stronger opponent and having a willingness to die for a cause. Again, I'm not saying it's nothing, but it's common among Resistance fighters so it doesn't set Finn a part in any appreciable way.

The books didn't suggest that Finn was Captain America, but I do think it portrayed him as far more skilled than what he's shown on screen thus far.

 

Agreed. I think War Machine is an appropo comparison if we reaching for marvel comparisons (good soldier, good character not superhuman, not a main but not a sidekick) except he doesn't have any nice things to play with and not much agency in looking like the good soldier he is billed as....hmmmm. Hope that gets fixed. I don't think us admirers of the Finn presented in the books and to a slightly lesser extent in TFA are looking for him to be Ironman, Captain America, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or hell even Mace Windu at this point. But can he at least be allowed to level up enough so he has more importance as a "warrior" (as Maz Kanata saw) than your average resistance grunt or BB-8?

 

I think at a minimum, if he is going to be involved in melee combat, 2 things need to happen

1. Show him actually honing his skill ahead of time
2. Have him win by application of skill in a straight up confrontation

Thus far we haven't had that. If he doesn't do melee combat fine (because honestly they haven't showed where he is competent in melee combat on screen) but give him some way to directly and personally impose his will on the outcome. It's long past due at this point.

 

There will have to be a different approach to story telling, and I agree with you 100%. Only Black Panther gave us full 3 dimensional characters. It was also the only movie where characters of color received love interests.

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2019, Original Post Date: May 4, 2019 ---

It kills me that you think you can sell a war movie with soldiers who don't know how to fight. No one spends money on that.
Rose is a joke. Her opinion of Finn is meaninglessness. This isn't an REO Speed wagon song. Nobody is here living for anybody else. The only opinion that should matter is Finn's, and that was taken away from him by a weak director who was intimidated by his character. This whole trilogy has been written by insecure people.

 

sigh

https://mobilestore.marvel.com/Star-Wars-Age-Of-Resistance-Finn-2019-1/digital-comic/51900

 

GOOD GRIEF!!

 

Well that's that...

 

I mean, Is it any different then the greatest hero of the galaxy grew up as a farm boy?

 

It's a whole lot different. He is more than a mop pusher, and the audience isn't interested in that, so why keep bringing it up. Especially when the FO should be intelligent enough to have robots doing those jobs. The greatest weapon we have is our mind. More time should be placed emphasizing that instead of some mop duties that a machine will always be better at than man.

I call the writing sinister and evil. The 3 male heroes of not only this trilogy, but the original trilogy were attacked. Setting it up so that the only flaws that were mentioned in the movie were theirs. Luke, Finn, and Poe were the problematic men. Even though all 3 men have sacrificed more than Rey and Kylo ever could. Rey made the biggest mistake, but that's glossed over, and ignored, because some want to push Reylo. Finn was a problem, because how dare a PTSD character not want to fight. In a country that celebrates memorial day and veterans day, it's disgusting how forgetful we are when it comes to those who are expected to sacrifice their lives for others. Even in a movie.

 

That's where you're taking this to far...

 

Yes, vastly different because that farm boy's upbringing wasn't redefined and, dare I say it, retconned in favor of a cheap joke. At this point, I can safely say that I have never seen a main character in any series of movies fall this far down the totem pole. We've reached a new low and it's disgusting.

 

For me, at this stage in the trilogy, I just want it to be over. Finn is not the character I though he was, or was going to be. Not to get into everything, Finn has been one of the biggest disappointments in this new Star Wars, and I think even John Boyega is just ready to be done with him! The character has a letdown ever since TFA and has not improved one bit. I seriously doubt there's anything they can or even want to do with him! This reminds me so much of those old detective films like "The Thin Man" and "The Falcon" or even "Boston *******", where in order to make the detectives the center of attention, the police and everybody else in the film have to be "dumbed down" so as to not compete with them. That's the way I see Finn, a character who has been deliberately "played down" in order for the audience to care about "you know who". Well, that's my Finn rant! Hard to believe I could have gone from shedding actual "tears of joy" watching him light up Luke's lightsaber to not giving a fig what happens to him...thanks Disney!

 

Yup different